Thursday, March 20, 2014

Wendy Doniger Episode: An Analysis Printer-friendly version

Wendy Doniger is once again back in news, as always, for the wrong
reasons. This time the Penguin decided to withdraw her book rather than
face the criminal charges in the court of law.

For those who may not be fully aware of the facts of the matter,
briefly the story is as follows. Wendy Doniger published her book
entitled ‘The Hindus: An Alternative History’ in 2009. She holds
high sounding Mircea Eliade Distinguished Service Professor Chair in
History of Religions at the University of Chicago. Even before the
publication of this book, she and her students have published many books
denigrating Hinduism. Most of her own and her students’
dissertations/books on Hinduism have often been described as pure
pornography by even the most serious academic journals.

Doniger and her students work around a central theme called
“Psychoanalysis of the Hindu Religion”. Their approaches show serious
problems with the training, competence and the mindset of academic
scholars of Hinduism and raise questions about their parochial
approaches and methodologies and at the same time the peer reviews. The
image of India and Hinduism are distorted by these scholars.

Imagine the psychological damage wrought on an Indian who is made to
read a text that says that ‘Ganesa’s trunk symbolises a limp phallus;
Ganesa’s broken tusk is a symbol of castration complex of Indian men;
his large belly and love for sweets are proof of Hindu male’s enormous
appetite for oral sex; Lord Siva is interpreted as a womaniser whose
temples encourage ritual rape, prostitution and murder; Ramakrishna
Paramhamsa was a conflicted homosexual and a paedophile who sexually
abused Swami Vivekananda; Lord Rama caused oppression of Indian
minorities and women; Laxman had illicit relationship with Sita, Goddess
Kali is the mother with penis; tantra temples are centers of rape and
murder rituals, and so on. This section also gives examples as to how
American scholars not only try to justify such outrageous writings but
also how various foundations and organisations go to the extent of
praising and awarding such works and giving prestigious appointments.

Such things have been going on for almost 40 years. But after the publication of her ‘The Hindus: An Alternative History’
concerned citizens took note of what she and her group have been
writing. Dina Nath Batra, a practicing Hindu, filed an FIR with the
police and initiated a criminal proceeding against Wendy Doniger and the
Publishers – Viking and Penguin. Once the publishers saw no escape from
punishment including a jail sentence, they opted for an out of the
court settlement and decided to withdraw the book from published list
and circulation. This out of court settlement between Penguin, a giant
in the publishing industry, and Dina Nath Batra, a practicing Hindu, has
prompted the pseudo-secularist and anti-Hindu activists to indulge in
their old game: Hindu bashing in the name of freedom of expression and
artistic creativity.

It is pertinent to note here that never in the intellectual world,
any other religion – be it Islam, Christianity, Judaism, or even the
smaller sects – are ever denigrated and ridiculed in the manner Hinduism
is treated under the garb of intellectual freedom and freedom of
expression and creativity.

Therefore, a far deeper question needs to be addressed here. Are
scholars like Wendy Doniger frustrated individuals who are staying away
from the well defined path of intellectual discourse or is there a
greater design to what they are doing?

Who Controls and Promotes Such Studies?

As with any large academic field, Religious Studies in the US is
highly organised and features prestigious journals, academic chairs, and
planned and extensive programmes of study. The American Academy of
Religion (AAR) is a primary organisation for academic scholars of
Religious Studies in the United States. Religion in South Asia (RISA)
is a unit within the AAR for scholars who study and teach about
religions of the Indian subcontinent.

The AAR traces its origin back to 1909 when an organisation was
formed for Professors and scholars of Biblican Studies whose purpose was
“to stimulate scholarship and teaching in [Christian] religion”. In
1922, the name was changed to National Association of Biblican
Institutions (NABI). Thus, its early history was clearly Bible-centric.
In 1963, stimulated by the ‘change in the study of religion’, NABI
became the American Academy of Religion (AAR). The AAR has over 8,000
members who teach in some 1,500 colleges, universities, seminaries and
schools in North America and abroad. Since its inception, the religious
studies organisations that evolved into AAR have maintained close
relations with the Society of Biblical Literature (SBL), founded in
1880. For many decades, the two have held their conferences jointly.
While SBL members primarily study and promote insiders’ views of
Judeo-Christianity, the AAR members are not supposed to promote any
particular viewpoint, and are required instead to pursue study of
religions through a neutral lens. The stated mission of AAR is to
promote objectivity from within, or outside of, any particular religious
tradition. With a growing membership, the AAR has developed an enormous
clout over the direction of Religious Studies in particular and the
humanities at large.

The Impact of AAR Activities

Americans in general are deeply religious people who see the world
through the lenses of religion, particularly some variants of
Judeo-Christianity. Western representation of India is inseparable from
the depiction of India’s religions, particularly Hinduism. Many
post-colonial scholars of Indian origin have tried unsuccessfully to
wish this link away. The problems of India are seen by the Americans as
inseparable from the problems of Hinduism. Attempts by ‘secular’ Indians
to distance themselves from Hinduism have led to an academic vacuum
about Indian traditions, which has been filled by Western and American
scholars who often have their own agendas to serve.

The researches and writings of religious scholars associated with AAR
and RISA go beyond the discipline’s boundaries, penetrating the
mainstream media, and directly impacting the American public perception
of India via museum displays, films and textbooks. The study of religion
informs a variety of disciplines, including Asian Studies,
International Studies, Women’s Studies, Sociology, Anthropology,
History, Literature, Journalism, Education and Politics. Western
theories of Hinduism have produced fantastic caricature of Hindus that
could be dramatised by Hollywood movies, satirical TV sit-coms, or
animated sci-fi cartoons. In all this, AAR’s Religion in South Asia
(RISA) group can be identified as a key source of Western academic
influence over India-related studies.

Inputs from these scholars decidedly have an impact on US foreign
policy. For instance, a conference at the University of Chicago
featured Wendy Doniger, Martha Nussbaum, Amartya Sen, among others; who
discussed about the generic ‘Hindu groups’ as the most serious threat to
India’s democracy. Indeed, in the conference announcement, Nussbaum
claimed that ‘Americans are wrong to be focusing on Islamic
fundamentalism as a threat to democracy’. She alleged that thinking
about India is instructive to Americans, who in the age of terrorism can
easily over-simplify pictures of the forces that threaten democracy… In
India, the threat to democratic ideals comes not from a Muslim threat,
but from Hindu groups.

Unlike in India, the academic study of religions in the US is a major
discipline involving over 8,000 university professors, most of whom are
members of AAR. Within this organised hierarchy, the study of Hinduism
is an important and influential discipline. The book highlights the fact
that the discipline has been shaped by the use of Euro-centric
categories that are assumed to be universal by Western syndicated
research. The producers and distributors of this specialised
research/knowledge comprise a sort of closed, culturally insular cartel,
which has disastrous consequence for original thinking about India and
Hinduism.

The selective and questionable ‘academic research’ and its
consequences filter into American classrooms, textbooks and media. Thus,
the average American learns much about India from the received wisdom
of the Academy.

Who is to be Blamed?

Let us be honest and do some soul searching to understand who is
responsible for such a sorry state of affairs regarding Hinduism
studies. It must be clear that the entire blame for biases and selective
portrayals of Hinduism and Indian culture can not be laid at the
doorsteps of the AAR, RISA or even the biased scholars within it.
Indians themselves have contributed to the problem in significant ways.
While American universities have major programmes for studying world
religions and cultures, Indian universities do not offer similar
programmes and provide the intellectual inputs to the world. Indeed,
the discipline of Religious Studies does not even exist in most
universities in India due to the particular myth that positive knowledge
about, and intellectual involvement with, religion breeds communalism.
Many Americans are shocked to learn that there is a deep prejudice
among India’s intellectually colonised intelligentsia, according to
which secularism implies the exclusion from, or even condemnation of
Indic religions in, civic society – which is exact opposite of the
respectful place given by American secular civic society to its majority
Judeo-Christian traditions.

Unlike all other major world religions, Hinduism does not have its
own home team, by which we mean a combined group of academic scholars
who are both practitioners of the faith and well-respected in the
academia at the

highest levels. Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism and Sikhism each
have their respective home teams in the academics – in fact, multiple
homes representing different denominations of these religions. Even
China has recently established numerous well-funded Confucius institutes
around the world that teach Chinese civilisational approaches to human
issues on par with the western models.

However, India’s case and responsibility of Indian academia and
universities do not end here. Even the departments (like Sanskrit,
Archaeology, History, Culture, Philosophy etc.) where religious studies
could be undertaken have not fulfilled their obligations to the nation
and its people. The reason for this apathy/failure/willful negligence is
best illustrated by Dilip Chakrabarti, who observes how the West has
bred and bought off a whole generation of elitist Indians, and how this
axis operates:

“After Independence ... [Indians] – especially those from
the ‘established’ families – were no longer apprehensive of choosing
History as an academic career... To join the mainstream, the historians
could do a number of things: expound the ruling political philosophy of
the day, develop the art of sycophancy to near-perfection or develop
contacts with the elite in bureaucracy, army, politics and business. If
one had already belonged to this elite by virtue of birth, so much the
better. For the truly successful in this endeavour, the rewards were
many, one of them being the easy availability of ‘foreign’
scholarships/fellowships, grants, etc. not merely for themselves but
also for their protégés and the progeny. On the other hand, with the
emergence of some specialist centers in the field of South Asian social
sciences in ‘foreign’ universities, there was no lack of people with
different kinds of academic and not-so-academic interest in South Asian
history in those places too. The more clever and successful of them soon
developed a tacit patron-client relationship with their Indian
counterparts, at least in the major Indian universities and other
centers of learning. In some cases, ‘institutes’ or ‘cultural centers’
of foreign agencies were set up in Indian metropolises themselves,
drawing a large crowd of Indians in search of short-term grants or
fellowships, invitations to conferences or even plain free drinks.”

And finally, even the scholars, who have done substantial work that
challenges the western scholars’ theses, are demonised, accused of
communalism, Hindutva, etc. A number of historians and sociologists
have pointed out that the control of others’ depiction by the White
Americans has led to their ethnic cleansing, incarceration, enslavement,
invasions and genocides. Native Americans, Blacks, Jews, Gypsies,
Cubans, Mexicans, Chinese, Phillippinos, Japanese, Vietnamese and now
Iraqis have suffered brutalities that were legitimised by their
depictions as primitive, exotic, irrational, heathen, savage, dangerous
and lacking in human values.

On a wider canvas, one may feel upbeat about India’s success from
business and economic points of view which is exemplified by books like
Gurucharan Das’ India Unbound or Thomas Friedman’s The World is Flat or even a large number of articles in business periodical like Forbes, Fortune and Business Week.
But the fact remains that perceptions change with much efforts.
Diplomat and intellectual Simon Anholt observes that while India is
shining in business, especially IT, there are many other factors
determining its image and credibility. This image, in turn, will either
facilitate or hamper India’s quest for economic growth in a globally
competitive world. He writes:

“A country is like a brand because it has a reputation,
and because that reputation partly determines its success in the
international domain. The ability of each country to complete against
others for tourists, for investments, for consumers, for the attention
and respect of the media and other countries is significantly determined
by power and quality of its range… What seems certain is that India’s
brand new image is a fragile one, based on a couple of prominent sectors
and a handful of globally successful entrepreneurs… but it isn’t yet
clear how ‘Capitalist India’ fits together in the public imagination
with the Indo-Chic of music, fashion and movies and with the
‘Traditional India’ image of vast, mysterious, culturally rich but
chaotic and even desperate country. A clear, single, visionary national
strategy is badly needed – but one that is, of course, rooted in truth
and not in wishful thinking.

Anholt’s point is that unless Indians take charge of engagement with
the world vis-à-vis their country and its culture is portrayed properly,
the economic future of all Indians may be at stake.